Storage, Cubed

As you’ve heard us say time and time again, our place is tiny and space for stuff and storage is at a premium. You get it. So once our office-slash-guestroom finally got situated in a way that we were happy with, we came upon yet another storage dilemma: where do we store the air mattress, comforter and extra pillows when guests aren’t visiting? At some point along the way, I was walking out our back door to the deck, and I looked up over my head when it hit me: There is a 3′ x 3′ x 3′ chunk of unused space above the door!

I immediately called up my good buddy Julio, who does high-end closet remodeling for a living, and he came over and assessed the situation with me after a quick description of what I was looking to do. Two days later, he came back with a few lengths of left-over 2’x4’s and a bit of spare drywall, and a couple hours later, our magical cube was framed, dry-walled and taped. We picked up a couple of hidden-mount hinges and a spring loaded latch at Home Depot, and the structure was complete. The next day, I sanded all of the joints and corners and got things prepped for paint. We wanted to ensure that the cube would go unnoticed, so I spent a quick 30 minutes rolling on Behr’s “Porpoise” paint (our current hallway color), so the transition from cube to wall would be seamless. Here’s what we came up with:

In the end, we gained about 3 cubic feet of storage, which may not seem like a lot, but is more than enough room for a couple of pillows, a duvet or two, an air mattress and pump, and all of our spare linens. The precious square footage is necessary for us and nearly invisible to everyone else. In the end, we created space where there was none before, and Julio walked away with a healty tip… Everyone wins.